AT Day 1: Getting my feet wet

5/15/2014 Thursday

Most people say to ease into things. I have never been able to.   I did sleep in though.  Got up about 6:45am and slowly gathered myself from the warm comfy wood floor to go out in the pooring rain.  I hit the top of Springer at 7:31am May 15th (my official start time.)  My birthday is 7/31, neat connection.  Feels good to finally get on the trail. It poured a couple of inches over night and was raining most of the day.  The trail was at times a flowing creek and a lot of puddles. But otherwise in good shape(not terribly muddy.)  It is always fun to be moving and warm while running thru the rain.  However; not drying off before camp would make for an awfully cold night.  Finally, the winds started picking up and around 5:45pm the sun poked out. It felt great and I knew I would have a chance to dry a bit before camp. After waiting for the wind to dry the leaves off, I finally got most of myself nearly dry.  I rolled into Low Gap Shelter around 7:00pm. 43.2 miles of trail behind me and feeling good(but tired.)  Food and off to bed.  
Note:  The real reason for the absurd first day was the logistics. I could not camp between miles 25 and 37 without a bear canister.  Fine. Ill sleep at the shelter at 38.5 miles. Nope. That was 1.2 miles off the trail so I left it up to how I felt. Today I felt good.  So it was 4.8 more easy miles. 

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